Shyamalan Shows Glass Footage; Earns ‘Gracious Reaction’

M. Night Shymalan screened 12 minutes of Glass for his distributors and seems quite pleased by the “gracious” reaction to the movie preview footage. Unbreakable was Shyamalan’s follow-up to his monster hit The Sixth Sense and starred Bruce Willis as a seemingly normal man who discovers he’s anything but. The movie was ahead of its time in its deconstruction of comic book tropes, but despite earning mostly positive reviews it wasn’t the smash success that its predecessor was, and plans for two additional sequels were shelved.

Unbreakable amassed a sizeable cult following in the wake of the comic book movie explosion in the 2000s, but for a long time it seemed that further discussion of a sequel would never amount to anything. Shyamalan has had mixed fortunes since his heyday, but his two Blumhouse movies to date (The Visit and Split) have shown that he can still work wonders with a high concept and small budget. Split, in particular, demonstrated that the director remains a master of surprise endings, when its final scene revealed that it exists in the same universe as Unbreakable – thus setting the stage for a confrontation between Willis’ David Dunn and James McAvoy’s superpowered villain The Horde in a third film.

Related: Glass Set Photos Reveal An Older Elijah Price

A sequel titled Glass was soon confirmed, uniting the key characters from both movies, including Split’s Anya Taylor-Joy and Samuel L. Jackson’s as Unbreakable’s mentor/villain Elijah Price (AKA Mr Glass). Glass is easily Shyamalan’s most eagerly awaited film in years, and he recently showed twelve minutes of footage to both Universal and Walt Disney Studios. The former will handle distribution in North America, while the latter will tackle Glass‘ international release. Thankfully, the director revealed through his Twitter account that the footage went over well with the movie’s distributors:

Split’s villain The Horde was featured in an early script draft for Unbreakable, but was removed by Shyamalan when he realized that the character didn’t quite fit into the story. He then planned to use him in a more direct sequel, before ultimately writing a screenplay based around the character because he loved the concept so much. While Split’s tag scene with Bruce Willis was always intended to tease a sequel, it was only after the movie became a huge success that Glass was put into production.

Unbreakable still holds up as both an emotional drama and an examination of the superhero myth, which is why it’s aged so well. Glass is intended to serve as the final part of Shymalan’s superhero movie trilogy, so hopefully it will live up to the quality of the two films proceeding it.

MORE: Shymalan’s Glass Has Wrapped Filming